What are your hobbies and interests?

Oh, boy, my favorite subject -- me!

My main hobby is making hot sauce and pepper jelly:  www.angelfire.com/cantina/lashermanas

Other hobbies:  Stenovations trainer and rep, hanging around the CR forums, playing Scrabble online at www.isc.ro, gardening and landscaping (I have a greenhouse I love to play in), remodeling the house (so far, remodeled kitchen, den, computer room, exercise room), on my neighborhood association board, wine drinking and socializing (most favorite, practiced at Boot Camp with Jana, Kerry and Sarah). 

 

Wow, Greta, you and I have the same favorite subject; what are the odds? 

I forgot about Scrabble.  I think your post on another forum (Depoman, IIRC) got me hooked on www.isc.ro.  And to think I asked you to bring your LiteSpeed to Boot Camp, when we coulda been playing Scrabble (in our copious spare time ;-)

As far as your hot sauce, I finally cracked open the habanaro sauce for my eggs this morning.  Awesome!  (What's this about pepper jelly?  Gotta check that out.)

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Okay, Karen, I'll confess to some not-CR interests:  baseball and baseball-related travel (1994's trip saw 15 games in 14 days in 13 cities, with 8000 miles of driving); cycling (human-powered bicycles and tandems; motorcycles scare the <deleted expletive> out of me); and cooking (especially with hot peppers and hot sauces).

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Tami, my dad introduced us to fighting kites, but I haven't flown anything in 30 years.  OTOH, where we live in lower Delaware is very windy...

adm
 

Adam:

19 days til opening day at Wrigley.  I was practically born at Wrigley Field -- my mom left during seventh-inning stretch.  I made it up to her - I got us tickets for the first night game.

I've also been to Dodgers Stadium, SBC (formerly PacBell) Park, Busch Stadium in St. Louis, the old and the new Comiskey and Fenway.  Which parks have you been to?

 Okay, let's see if I can do this without looking anything up:

Fenway Park, Boston; Yankee Stadium, Shea Stadium, New York; Shibe Park, Veterans Stadium, Citizens Bank Park, Philadelphia; Memorial Stadium, Oriole Park at Camden Yards, Baltimore; Atlanta Fulton County Stadium; Ballpark in Arlington, TX; Kauffman Stadium, Kansas City; Wrigley, Old Comiskey, New Comiskey, Chicago; County Stadium, Milwaukee; Tiger Stadium, Detroit; Olympic Stadium, Montreal; Skydome, Toronto; BankOne Ballpark, Phoenix; Candlestick Park, San Francisco; Dodger Stadium, Los Angeles; Jack Murphy Stadium, San Diego (had to look that one up); Riverfront Stadium, Cincinnati; Three Rivers Stadium, PNC Park, Pittsburgh; Jacobs Field, Cleveland; plus six or eight minor league parks.

One of  my favorite things is the doubleheader.  But, in keeping with my personal motto (if it's worth doing, it's worth overdoing), I do it a little differently:  day game at Chicago, night game in Milwaukee; day game in Cleveland, night game in Detroit; day game in New York, night game in Philly.  This year I'm hoping to do a Washington/Baltimore doubleheader.  Oh, and we did do one of those rare Cubs-in-the-day-White-Sox-at-night doubles, thanks to a scheduling quirk as a result on the '94-'95 strike.

(And now you're going to make me change my sig to another Walt Whitman quote.)

ETA:  Duh!  Got my hometown and first ballpark wrong:  Shibe Park was, at the time, known as Connie Mack Stadium. 

 

Adam,

WOW!!  That's a lot of ballparks!!!   The Skydome in Toronto is the nicest ballpark ever, especially for a night game.  But the park that's the most fun is Wrigley.  Which one was your favorite and why?  (just curious.)

I see that a lot of other people have put court reporting as a hobby.  Since it involves researching and learning new things, which I love to do, I'd definitely have to list that.

My other interests are my pets -- bunnies, exotic birds, and koi fish.  The birds include a blue and gold macaw, two African grey parrots, a lovebird, jenday conure, cockatiels, and parakeets.  The bunnies were all rescues from shelters, with the exception of one, and range from a 3-pound Netherland dwarf (??) up to a mellow 17-pound Flemish giant.  When my workload permits, I help out at our local SPCA caring for the bunnies and other small animals.

My other hobbies include workouts at the gym and healthy eating.  Another big favorite is experimenting with different recipes making my own lotions and skin creams, as well as adding an artistic twist to my soaps.  

Favorite?  I have to pick one?

Wrigley.  It's a dump, but it's Wrigley, you know.  Bleacher Bums, "Dying Cubs Fan's Last Request," Harry Carey, the winds Wrigleyville, day games, the hand-operated scoreboard.

Confession:  I hate Fenway. (Okay, love-hate)  At 6'3", 350, it's miserable in seats built for the 1912-sized man.  (Though I'm anxious to try it again, at 205 lbs, though I still don't know where I'll stick my legs.)

Tiger Stadium had the flagpole in centerfield -- in fair territory -- 440' from home plate.  That was cool.

Love OPCY (I did a whole bunch of deps about Oriole Park, and all the cool kids called it "OPCY") for starting the renaissance of new, baseball-only, in-city parks.

Love the Jake for turning what Baltimore started into a flood of new parks

Hate the Phillies ownership for pretending for years that they really, honestly, truly wanted to build a downtown ballpark (downtown Philadelphia is one of the most livable cities in the world; I used to live on a tree-lined residential street three blocks from the tallest office buildings in town), if only the mean citizens didn't stop them at every turn and force them to build it nowhere near the city center, at the intersection of two interstates, surrounded by a sea of concrete, inaccessible to public transportation from the south (or much of the east or west).  Except for those flaws, however, Citizens Bank Park is very nice.

County Stadium in Milwaukee is gone.  I hope you can still get those awesome brats with "stadium sauce" at Miller Park.

The BOB -- which I think has a different name these days -- in Phoenix is too big, too sterile, and that pool does not belong in a ballpark.  However, I'd go back again, just to eat at Mrs. White's Golden Rule Cafe. 

I found the Ballpark at Arlington to be a sterile copy of OPCY.

Shea's a dump.  

PNC Park in Pittsburgh is everything Citizens Park in Philly should have been.  People leave their offices after work, dine locally, walk to the ballpark.  Arrrrgh!

Adam:

I'm of course somewhat biased when it comes to Wrigley.  Maybe 100 years is the charm, eh?  Keeping my fingers crossed that everyone stays healthy this year!!!

I don't think I'll ever get used to Dodgers Stadium -- the park is fine, and convenient enough for me -- it's on a hill just across the freeway from where I live.  Whenever they have fireworks we can see them from our backyard deck. But I hate going to games there because of the "fans." What kind of people show up in the 3rd and leave in the 7th?  And spend much of the interim batting a beachball around the stands?  Makes me NUTS, having been raised at a ballpark with real baseball fans, where they show up during batting practice and don't leave until they change the order of the pennants on the scoreboard to correctly reflect the standings, and actually pay attention to the game!  And don't get me started on "Dodger dogs."  Those are not hot dogs. 

FYI, if you ever get a chance to visit SBC Park in San Francisco, don't miss it.  When you see it on TV, all you see of McCovey Cove is the search for homerun balls and the kayaks and boats, but there's a walkway around the back of the park and in the right field corner, there's a small alcove where there's nothing between the warning track and the outside of the stadium except for a metal grill.  Watching from out there is so incredibly cool.  When I went, the natives were amazingly friendly and polite - they actually shifted and made room so that didn't have to try to peer over or through other people -- they made a hole so I could see everything.  It was like standing *in* right field. 

I love giving parties and entertaining.  Christmas is my favorite time to entertain.

Something I really enjoy and I haven't seen too many people doing this.  This hobby is genealogical research.  It is very exciting and you never get through looking.  So it is definitely something busy people can do in their spare time   You can find a lot of this on the internet.  Great for something to do at 2 a.m.  If anyone needs help getting started, just e-mail me or give me a call.

I discovered after tracing a family from Texas to Mississippi to Tennessee, back to Axtell, Texas, then to Bryan, Texas and then to Houston that one of our 20 year clients was my husband's fourth cousin.  Also discovered that one of my Revolutionary War soldiers was from Orangeburgh District, South Carolina.  We had a letterhead come in one day with the name Felder on it.  I called the law firm to see if we shared the same ancestors.  We shared the same grandfather that was in the Revolutionary War.  We had another letter from a firm in Louisiana.  I researched the same thing and found we shared the revolutionary soldier as a grandfather and one of his sons.  I informed each attorney of their relatives in the other states.  They were excited to find the information.

My husband and I research about 160 families.  I never thought I would like this but I love it.  As we find books pertaining to our families we try to place books about them in our genealogical library and also the libraries where they lived in the early years.  We also try to pass the information on to the younger ones in our family so they will not have to waste their time on the early years and can just continue adding to their family history year after year.

We are trying now to travel to see states where our ancestors were in the early years.  On the way we stop at great hotels, casinos and just have a good time while researching. 

 

Hi Lillian,

 Great topic. I play drums in a band.  Any musicians out there in court reporting land? 

Soccer -- I play 4 days/nights a week (leagues).

  Growing up with 2 brothers, I'm quite the sports FANatic (football,
  basketball, baseball, soccer, boxing), but I'm a soccer player.  I've
  been tuned to the TV lately (March Madness).

Traveling -- I'm beginning to embark overseas with a trip to India next month (excited)!!

On a side note, when did you live on SPI, Breck?  My uncle lived on the island for about ten years and recently purchased a "ranch" near Bayview.  He still has his four-plex on Oleander St. that he rents out.  I would venture to guess you'd have run into him if you flew kites because he picked it up while living there.  He's an outgoing, really friendly balding guy who would have always had his German Shepherd Hans with him. 

I enjoy golfing and playing board games and cards - double-deck pinochle, 500, and a few games my grandma learned while being a snowbird in TX.

 

 

I love playing board games. Scrabble is my all time favorite. I also love cooking and trying out new recipes from my two favorite magazines Fine Cooking and Taste of Home. I also enjoy watching SciFi, reading, wheel throwing , gardening, working out at the gym and surfing the net.

Wow, what an interesting group we are!!  These topics are sure to make interesting chat sessions.